What were the final events that led to Southern secession and the Civil War?

0:03The wisdom so to speak, of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill should have been that everyone peacefully makes a decision for themselves in the Western territories and everyone is happy as a result because there's no need for conflict anymore between North and South. Oh, what a miscalculation that was. When the territory of Kansas began to move towards organization after the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was passed in 1854, what both Northerners and Southerners realized is whoever could stampede more of a majority of their own people into Kansas would have the whip handle in organizing Kansas either for legalized slavery or against it. You have Southerners who rush into Kansas trying to achieve a majority for slavery. You have Northerners who rush into Kansas trying to achieve a majority against slavery. When they get there, they realize there's another way to achieve a majority, and that is kill off the enemy and

1:07you have what amounts to a miniature Civil War that breaks out in Kansas. Kansas becomes known as bleeding Kansas from the conflicts that paralyze the organization of Kansas as a territory. Then you add on top of it the fatal Dred Scott decision of 1857, a decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States, with Chief Justice Roger Tawny, writing the majority opinion, claiming that in fact, not only is the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Not only was that unconstitutional, but the compromise of 1850 was unconstitutional, and so is the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. There should be no bar to the organization of the Western territories, Louisiana purchased or whatever. There should be no bar whatsoever to them being organized as slave territories. There should be no let or hindrance in the path of any slave owner taking their property,

2:05their slaves into the Western territories. This looks to people in the North who were horrified at the prospect. As though a conspiracy has been formed, not only to legalize slavery in the territories, but at the next Supreme Court decision to tear down all the protections for freedom in the Northern states and make them into slave states. It's an attitude, which has not helped by the fact and the boasting of some southerners, the one Southerner in particular, who was reputed to have given a speech saying that he looked forward to a day soon when he would be able to see a slave auction take place in the shadow of the Bunker Hill Monument. This looks for nothing except collision. This is what you get. In 1856, it's represented by the contest for the presidency between James Buchanan. The candidate of a new upstart, anti-slavery Northern Party the Republican Party, who nominate John Charles Fremont as their candidate.

3:13Now, Buchanan wins and he wins, largely because he has an impressive long-term track record. But four years later, all of that has fallen to pieces. In November of 1860, the Republican candidate for the presidency, this time, Abraham Lincoln is elected president. Southerners look at that, and they see that Lincoln is pledged, first of all, to oppose slavery.

3:39He's an enemy of slavery. He makes no hesitation at saying that. Secondly, Lincoln makes it clear that not only does he oppose slavery, but he will as president oppose any effort to legalize slavery in the Western territories. At that moment, Southerners see, we have no future in the Union. We can't expand, we can't grow.

4:00We can't acquire more political power and more political heft. Therefore, we're leaving. That is when succession begins just after Lincoln's election in November of 1860, when South Carolina leads the pack by announcing that it has seceded from the Union, that on December 20th, 1860 and South Carolina is then followed by six other Southern states, and eventually four more after that.